Monster Train is a deck-building game that combines Roguelike gameplay with turn-based combat, which inherits the basic design of its predecessors and provides players with a fun tower climbing journey without changing the main gameplay.
Generally speaking, the process of playing Roguelike games will encounter a large number of random events, these random events usually bring unpredictable variables, so that players must face the consequences of each game turn, it is precisely because of this mechanism full of randomness, so that each game has an unknown freshness, the so-called luck is also a kind of strength, if you want to pass the level smoothly, in addition to having a clear idea in the face of the battle, sudden good luck is more important.
The story of this game takes place in the already frozen hell, the player will play the monster train classic train conductor, vowing to transport the important goods carried by the train to the frozen heart in the depths of hell, using its high temperature characteristics to melt the frozen heart, so that the hell can return to its proper appearance, but the angels will not sit idly by, they have already sent soldiers on the tracks to hinder the progress of the train.
In order to achieve the purpose of restoring Hell, on the one hand, the player must resist the attack from the heavenly forces, on the other hand, to continuously improve the combat strength of the passengers, the troops sent by heaven to attack the train will become more and more powerful, and only by strengthening the passenger combat strength can they go all the way through the barriers, break out of the siege and regain the living space belonging to the inhabitants of hell.
The game flow doesn't change much, and the core gameplay focuses on fighting and choosing
It is impossible to experience a different game flow in each game, because the flow of each game of Monster Train is fixed, in other words, the train route is fixed, the player will experience eight battles, and the enemy units that appear in these eight battles will not change much, at most, it will change some characteristics, and the game will end after the player has successfully challenged eight battles, which can be called the completion of a round of the game.
Honestly, in terms of the length of the level of this game, the single round of the game can be ended in less than forty minutes at the earliest, which is indeed not a rich content, but the production team cleverly added the [Trial] element, allowing players to freely choose whether to challenge the higher difficulty of the level, the content of these trials is mostly for the enemy unit upgrade effect, such as attack power increase, reflection damage, increased armor, speed speed, enemy unit increase, etc., if you can complete the test of the trial, you can get gold coins, clan units, Artifacts and other rewards.
When the player successfully attacks a battle, they will enter two bifurcated railway routes, we can only choose one of the routes to advance, usually there will be essentially different things between the two routes, such as the left route has a booster unit shop, the right one is a booster spell shop, so the player can choose the route for the current needs, without hesitation for too long.
It is worth mentioning that the main function of triggering random events will also appear on the route, for example, the player may find mysterious caves used to copy cards, artifact items that can be obtained at a cost, celestial refugees waiting for rescue, special enhancement effects with advantages and disadvantages, as to whether there will be random events in your favor, it depends on your luck.
Protect the fire, recruit passengers, and repel the legions of angels who stand in the way
After officially entering the battle, the first thing that catches the eye is the train compartment with a total of four layers of space, the enemy will enter the train from the entrance at the bottom right of the screen in each turn, and the enemy who has not been destroyed in each turn will move to the upper floor, when the enemy reaches the fourth floor of the fire chamber, it will launch a forced death battle, if the fire is unfortunately destroyed in the course of the battle, then the game will directly end and enter the score settlement screen.
So how do we prevent the fire from being destroyed by the enemy? Players can summon passengers or unleash magic by consuming Embers. For example, if there are three Embers in the first round, the player can choose to use two Embers to summon one unit to stay on the second floor, and then use the last Ember to cast damage spells, summoning a fireball to kill enemy units hidden in the back row.
Although the Classic Train has four layers of space, except for the uppermost fire chamber, the player only has three layers of space that can be used to place units, and when the enemy and our units are in the same box, the battle will be triggered, and the non-boss-level units will move the surviving units up one floor after one turn of battle, and so on.
In most cases, the enemy will have a first-hand advantage, resulting in friendly units with low health points being easily killed by a turn, so we must take into account the attack power, armor, health, and whether there are additional special effects of each unit, and calculate the placement combination that can minimize the damage, so that the level strategy can be successfully completed under the premise of minimal damage to the salary. As mentioned at the front end, there are eight battles in the game's single flow, and three of these eight battles are boss battles.
In addition to the boss units have higher health and attack power than ordinary units, they will also have special abilities that affect the battle situation, and if they want to attack the bosses, they usually need to make a lot of advance preparations, and they really don't play with you.
Let me take the boss unit "Tester Blazing Angel" that appeared on the last floor as an example, his special ability is to move to a random floor and give all his own units on that floor a weakening effect, the weakening effect will greatly reduce the attack damage that the unit can cause, and the Tester Blazing Angel can carry out up to three multiple attacks, I believe that the vast majority of players are defeated when they encounter this boss for the first time, but don't be discouraged, after repeated play to absorb the key points of the raiders, he is actually not such a difficult boss.
With five unique clans, choose the style of play that suits you best
Monster Train has a large classification called "Clans", each clan has different card characteristics, there are currently five different styles of clans in the game, namely Hell Demon, Enlightened One, Dark Guardian, Shadow Lord, and Molten Corpse, except for the prison demons and enlightened people at the beginning, the remaining three clans have to complete the specified conditions to unlock, such as the Dark Guardian to use five hundred spells, shadow lord summon three hundred and fifty units, and so on.
In fact, the author was initially dissatisfied with the design of not opening all the clans to the player's choice at the beginning, but after actually using the major clans to play several rounds of the game, it was found that the more stringent the unlocking conditions of the clan, the difficulty of getting started is relatively high, if the clans of advanced difficulty are all opened at the beginning, it is very likely that the novice who plays for the first time cannot control its characteristics, and after being beaten to the ground, it will have a sense of rejection of the game itself.
Each clan has its own hero card, hero card has three characteristics, one is that the summoning fee is zero and the first turn must be drawn, the second is that there is only one card in the deck, and finally it can go to the special facilities in the game process to upgrade the enhancement, the strengthening does not pay any cost, each upgrade will have two different routes to choose from, the player can choose the designated upgrade route for the hero card according to the current situation.
For example, the Prison Demon Hero card [Prince of Broken Horns] has three common upgrade effects, namely: attacked will accumulate rage, killing units will increase armor value, and multiple attacks, if there are high-health meat shield units specifically for defense in the front row, we can consider giving up the effect of killing units to obtain armor values, and choose multiple attack routes, so that under the protection of meat shields, we can focus on killing enemy units without worrying about survival.
Let's talk about the clan level rewards, after unlocking the clan, the system will not open all the clan decks to the player, we must choose the clan to play, complete round after round of game rounds to accumulate experience points, so that we can increase the clan level, when the clan level continues to rise to a certain stage, we will get all the key cards of the clan.
Logically, this design is a means to extend the life of the game, because the number of cards is limited, and releasing them all in one breath will make it difficult for players to remember the efficacy of each card, and it will also lead to insufficient incentives for repeated play using a single clan, which greatly shortens the game life, so for players who do not like to spend time brushing experience to unlock cards, this may be a drawback of deducting points.
No money is a no-no, and gold coins are an important resource for strengthening cards
"Monster Train" has two main card types, namely units and spells, the raider process will find shops used to upgrade units or spells, and the resources to upgrade them are gold coins, here is a brief description of the source of gold coins, complete the level will give gold coins, complete the level trial will give gold coins, the railway route will occasionally have gold piles, some random events may get gold coins.
Back to the upgrade part, first from the unit upgrade explanation, the unit has four attributes, life, damage, armor, effects, of which not all units have armor and effects, but the player can add effects or armor for the unit through the upgrade shop, just because of the emergence of the unit store, so that there is no waste unit in the game that can not be lifted, as long as you are willing to spend money to upgrade the unit, they will be useful.
Spell upgrades are more complicated than unit upgrades, many powerful upgrades will have side effects, such as making the spell power greatly increased, but additional "consumption" effects, and even random events will make the units and spells get enhanced upgrades, but will add a "remove" effect, which means that as long as you play this card, then the card will disappear from your deck permanently, which is a kind of emergency life-saving ace, of course, we can also use it against the final boss, after all, whether you end up winning or losing, All cards cannot be carried over to the next round of the game, and the player only needs to choose the right time to use up the powerful cards.
The lesser of two evils does not have to be the lesser, you can choose to give up all
For novice players who have never been exposed to roguelike tower climbing games, starting from scratch in the process of getting started with "Monster Train", there may be three kinds of problems, the first is not knowing how to choose the types of cards obtained, the more to the later in the game, the number of cards in the deck will be more and more, but not every card has its purpose, [waste card] Concept also applies to this game, except for unwanted cards, and then avoid getting those cards that they can't use again, I think it is the first skill for novice players to learn. The second is that when encountering random events, you must not accept it all, everything has both positive and negative sides, choice will definitely bring risks, and the only way to completely avoid risks is to ignore everything.
Of course, I am not encouraging novice players to ignore all random events, but just to remind them that if they are caught in a dilemma, do not forget that you have a third option, that is, ignore both options, give up the problem in front of you and turn away. The third and most important point is that Roguelike is a game genre that requires three parties, as for which three parties?
The author classifies it as "opening", "process", "final", the opening refers to the clan that the player chooses to control, as well as the upgrade route provided by the early system, which is not to say that the bad opening effect will make the game unplayable, but the better opening effect will make your next road more smooth. The process refers to everything that the player encounters in the process of strategy, including the type of enemy, the strength of the unit obtained, the level of spell power, the amount of health left in the fire, etc. Seemingly inconspicuous value changes may cause irreparable situations.
Taking the author himself as an example, when a certain round challenged the second boss, "Phil the Lightwing", due to the desire to kill quickly, I did not remove the negative cards that would unconditionally deduct the health of the salary if I remained in my hand before the end of the round, although I successfully eliminated the boss before the boss himself went to the carriage, it also caused the fire to lose too much health, and finally lost in the seventh battle round, and could not continue to attack the final boss.
The final game refers to the result of the game's settlement, and some people may ask: "Roguelike will start all over again at the end of each game, what does the final game mean to me?" In fact, the final result is the most important thing to pay attention to in the Raiders Roguelike game, the beginning requires luck, and the luck component of the raider process also accounts for a large proportion, but the final game is not the result of any luck component elements.
From the game level, experiencing the final game will gain experience points, experience points can make the clan upgrade to unlock more key cards, so that you have more cards to use, but from another point of view, the final disk is the key link for players to accept the results and learn the skills of the clearance, in the mind to recall the opening choices, think about whether there should be mistakes on the way to the raiders, integrate this information, you can meet a better final result.
Although there is no revolutionary new gameplay, it is still an excellent spiritual time house
This review is about to be summarized, and readers who have read this paragraph patiently should have found that this is an excellent work with more advantages than disadvantages, and if I can point out one of the most successful game designs of Monster Train among the many advantages, it must be the carriage design and combat system of the classic car number. The reason for this is that enemy units have an overwhelming advantage in battle, and their own units not only attack one step slower in order, but they can only move arbitrarily on the floors arranged by the fixed player without considering the effect of spells.
Once the placement of the unit is wrong, then there is a great chance of losing all, the previous efforts are abandoned, and the upgrade effect and artifact function obtained by the player in the process of strategy can reverse this disadvantage, and it is the mechanism setting of the coexistence of risk and opportunity that makes this game a unique deck building game.
All in all, Monster Train doesn't bring revolutionary new gameplay, its basic system is not much different from most of the "Tower Climbing Roguelike" games on the market, and it can even be described by the word borrowed mirror, starting with selecting a specific clan, defeating enemies to obtain new cards, triggering random events to collect artifacts, defeating bosses to complete a new round of challenges, and repeating the loop.
Seemingly unchanging gameplay, but there is a certain mysterious force that makes people want to play and play again, about this point can actually be glimpsed from the classification of this game: "deck building game", the deck represents the luck component, the construction is to use the brain to think, will make people unable to extricate themselves from the want to play another game, perhaps this is the game will use the brain to play the fun, as well as unpredictable random events perfectly integrated together, giving players a not only to use the brain but also to gamble on the ultimate challenge of luck.